Random thoughts on my hobbies (miniatures gaming, hiking, geocaching), family, literature, music and whatever else occurs to me. My Wife graciously suggested a blog name of Eric's Dork-o-rama, but that sounded less dignified somehow...true though it may be.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

October Hobby Update

I have been delinquent in posting recently, but I have been diligently putting some time in on finishing projects that had been started but then languished, taking up space in limbo without being able to be checked off and filed away.

Bocage

Bocage - I had made some hedge/bocage terrain for 15mm WW2 use, and it worked well in the Fireball Forward! games that Leo and I played back in August 2013. I made around 15 linear feet or so of the stuff the first time around, but what became very quickly apparent is that even a modest sized table can eat up lots and lots of these. My write up on how I made the "hedge" pieces is back in March 2013, here. This time around, I made another batch of 22-23 feet, almost all pieces having a small tree or two embedded in them. I also made a variety of lengths, ranging from 12 or 15 inches down to little pieces that are only 3 inches long. This will give me more flexibility for terrain layouts, as well as for creating "breaches" in the bocage as needed during games (pull one long piece off and replace with two smaller pieces separated by a gap).

Roads - brown and gray

Roads - Making roads out of a non-flexible material is not the most preferable thing in the world, as it makes them, well, less flexible. But I have been in need of more roads, and as I was making hedges the first time around, it occurred to me that the same general process (carved balsa strip, glue, sand, spray paint, dry brush) could be used to make roads. I saw a game of Fireball Forward! at a convention last year that used a combination of roads like shown below to have both "urban" roads (improved roads in built up areas) and "rural" roads. It was very easy, with Grace's help, to make about 20 feet each of brown and gray road, a sampling of which is shown. I am pleased by the result. They are 1.5 inches wide, and look good for both 25mm figures of all periods as well as my 15mm WW2.

Saxons and Vikings

Dark Ages skirmish - I have modest sized armies of both Saxons and Vikings in 25mm that I never use. In preparing for the Fall In convention in November, I have signed up for a Saturday morning flea market table. I have too much stuff that I don't use often (or in some cases at all), and I would rather focus my energies on the things that I do play. My original intent was to sell all of both of these armies, but I decided to pull out 40-50 figures of each and make armies for Saga skirmish rules. While rebasing, I also took some time to touch up the painting on a few of the figures, as some of these are among the oldest figures I own. Whether or not these get played with or not remains to be seen, but I definitely stand a better shot of getting around to it than I did with conventional dark age armies. The remainder will be sold...and maybe these too someday.

Ottomans - I have also made some painting and basing progress on my Ottomans (although as usual the bases have not been scenicked yet. Over the course of the past few weeks I painted one little unit of 4 akinji light cavalry figures, completed a unit of Janissary archers in a green scheme, and painted three units of Ottoman armored infantry. All are Old Glory 25mm.

Ottoman akinji

Ottoman Janissaries (front and side)

Ottoman armored infantry

The Ottomans are going to be based on Impetus style bases rather than conventional basing as per the rest of my medieval armies. I am a little hesitant to do this, as this will be my only army based this way, but I do like the more random "diorama" look you can get doing it this way (as well as needing fewer figures because they don't need to be crammed in as tightly in such a rigidly structured way).